


Promises Kept

by esteoflorien



Category: Wicked - Schwartz/Holzman
Genre: F/F, Gelphie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-08
Updated: 2014-02-08
Packaged: 2018-01-11 14:24:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1174130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esteoflorien/pseuds/esteoflorien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Glinda receives an unexpected, mysterious invitation to dinner, and finds she can't refuse. (Bexy prompted Gelphie and dinner in the EC.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Promises Kept

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PerilouslyClose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PerilouslyClose/gifts).



She never considered declining the invitation. After all, Glinda the Good received so few invitations to dinner, she couldn’t actual recall the last one. She supposed it had to have been at Shiz. She left university and got caught up in a war, only to survive on the other end as a beautiful and untouchable queen. Her bubble was an effective shield against the world; she often thought that Elphie would have been proud of her. But like all shields, it was exclusionary; it hid her away by making her into someone to be revered. To be revered, Glinda had learned, to be celebrated and admired and practically worshipped, was to be different, to be set apart. She was at once an Ozian – of the Arduennas of the Uplands – and their leader; a queen come from the people, unable to return.

It had arrived in a nondescript envelope. _Would you do me the honor of your company at dinner?_ The language had struck her. It was an attempt at eloquence from someone adept at feigning it, but one who had not had social niceties ingrained since childhood. And yet there was something endearing about the handwritten card, something compelling, and she had immediately dashed off her reply. Perhaps it was the novelty of being asked to dinner; perhaps it was curiosity. She sent her reply on her own stationery, heavy cream paper embossed with her sign. She wondered who would receive it, and what he would make of her reply.

~

She took care with her dress that evening; it wouldn’t do to be too Glinda the Good. It was bad enough she would arrive by bubble, but there was no faster way to return to the Emerald City from her country seat. She had received a note of thanks in reply to her message, and it had included extraordinarily precise directions to the location of the restaurant, which Glinda had never heard mentioned among the courtiers in the city. Perhaps it was new, she considered, eyeing her reflection critically as she fixed her hair. It wouldn’t do to have too much curl. She wore as plain a dress as she owned, which is to say it was not especially plain at all, but it lacked the full skirt and crinoline of her other gowns. It was made of deep blue silk, and it hugged her figure nicely. Her mother had bought it for her at Lurlinemas; it was the kind of dress Galinda would be wearing now, if she were still Galinda. She had thanked her mother sincerely, and put it away. Such dresses were not made for Glinda the Good. That night it felt almost like a costume, except rather than putting on a different sheath, it was if she were returning to her own.

~

The restaurant, such as it was, was located in one of the city’s less savory neighborhoods, in the region she had taken to calling the Beryl City. The directions were accurate enough; she simply hadn’t anticipated exactly where she would be traveling. She’d had the foresight to abandon her bubble in the city center. She was grateful for the seeming plainness of her traveling cloak, for the way its hood hid her golden hair from view. She was relieved that the restaurant appeared to the kind of establishment where refusing to remove one’s cloak would not be at all unusual. Unfortunately, as many of the patrons seemed to feel as she did, she had no idea how to find her mystery companion.

It occurred to her, as she stood silently in the doorway, that even if they’d all been dressed to the nines in one of the EC’s most exclusive nightclubs, she still wouldn’t have known her dinner partner. It was a ridiculous flight of fancy to have come, she decided, and spun on her heel to leave.

“Watch it!” a burly many exclaimed.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, paying more attention to hiding her face than apologizing. They said that Glinda the Good had friends everywhere, but she knew perfectly well that her enemies lurked in corners like these, and she had no wish to try her luck tonight.

She stole back out into the darkened streets, where at least the moon offered a bit of light. She didn’t have far to go, she consoled herself. She was only a few blocks on the outskirts of the city center; once she left the Beryl City she could escape into her bubble and be done with this entire thing.

It was all she could do to stifle her scream when she heard footsteps behind her grow louder and louder, and felt a hand grasp her firmly on the shoulder.

“I honestly didn’t think you’d come,” the figure said.

Glinda couldn’t make out the features hidden by cape similar to her own, but she’d know that voice anywhere, despite the intervening years since she’d last heard it. “Elphie,” she breathed. “Why are you here?”

Elphaba pulled her off to the side, hiding them in the alley. “I believe,” she said after a moment, “that I invited you to dinner.”

“Of course,” Glinda said after a moment. “But I didn’t think for a moment it was you.”

“Oh come on, Glinda,” Elphaba snapped. “You couldn’t possibly have believed that some little twit with burgled shoes and a godforsaken little dog managed to kill me.”

Glinda attempted to school her expression, but Elphaba saw through her. “I can’t believe you actually bought the story. It was supposed to fool them, not you.”

“What on earth was I supposed to think, Elphie?” The nickname returned so naturally to her lips.

Elphaba frowned. “I told you I’d be back. _Hold out, my sweet_.”

“I remember,” Glinda murmured.

“It just took me rather longer than I expected.”

“It’s been almost a decade, Elphie.”

“I wasn’t exactly on an extended holiday, Glinda,” Elphaba said, after a long moment. “But I am sorry I never contacted you until now.”

“You’re here now,” Glinda said quietly.

They stood in silence while several people passed by. By the tiny sliver of moonlight that shone through the roofs, Glinda sought out Elphaba’s gaze and held it. There she was, Glinda realized, studying her. Elphaba was still shadowed by the hood of her cape, much as Glinda was, but she could see her eyes, and she would know them anywhere.

“Now, there’s nothing wrong with the restaurant I chose,” Elphaba said, after a moment, breaking the spell. “It won’t offend your sensibilities too much to dine with me there, I’m sure.”

“Of course not,” Glinda said indignantly. “I came, didn’t I?”

“So you did,” Elphaba replied. “And I’m marveling at that fact.”

~

Glinda was no more impressed by the food than she had been by the décor, but there was something entirely delicious about sharing a secret dinner with Elphie tucked away in the corner of this seedy little dive.

“What do you think they’re talking about?” she asked, nodding towards the bar.

“Don’t do that,” Elphie admonished, immediately. “And they’re certainly not talking about anything _you_ need to know about.”

“Because I’m Glinda the Good?” she said, mocking her own title.

“Because some part of you is still Galinda, and I would like to keep Galinda safe from that, thank you very much,” Elphie retorted. Glinda didn’t know whether to be hurt or pleased that Elphaba had recognized that she had changed, too, and how far she was from the girl who had stepped off the train at Shiz.

Glinda poked at her dinner, which was supposedly some kind of pasta, but which gave her the unmistakable impression of moving. “This is the dinner we were always supposed to have,” she said, suddenly.

Elphaba looked up from her own meal, which she was practically devouring in comparison to Glinda. “What do you mean?”

“That night we spent in the EC, before you left. We were supposed to go to dinner, and we had no money, and we never did.”

“We didn’t,” Elphaba agreed. “I still don’t have any money.”

Glinda laughed. “I don’t care, and I didn’t then.”

“I see that now.”

Glinda sat back in her seat and gave up all pretension of eating. “I have money,” she said, amiably, and Elphaba laughed. “No, listen to me, Elphie. I have money and a lovely country seat. It has functional heating and a well-stocked kitchen and comfortable chairs. What say we decamp back to the manor?”

Elphaba rested her fork on the plate. “You seem so certain that I’ll go with you.”

“Are you going to leave me again?” Much to her dismay, her voice trembled.

“No,” Elphaba said, as if the thought had never crossed her mind. “I think I made some promises, and if nothing else, Galinda Upland, I keep my promises.”

Elphaba reached into her money purse and deposited some coins on the table. “Come,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”

“And here I thought this was such a worthy establishment.”

“I find myself entranced by the thought of heat,” Elphaba said dryly, and ushered them through the restaurant, out into the streets, and through a maze of alleyways until they reached one of the city parks.

“Oh thank Lurline,” Glinda said, to which Elphaba chuckled.

“Shouldn’t you thank me?”

“ _You_ brought me there,” Glinda retorted, and pulled Elphaba close to cast the spell. The familiar pink bubble encased them, and soon, they were floating off home.

 Beside her – in her arms, practically – Elphaba chuckled. “You would travel by iridescent pink bubble.”

“Bubbles are, by their nature, iridescent,” Glinda replied, doing her best to distract herself from Elphaba’s closeness. This was another part of Galinda that she had long since forgotten, or convinced herself to forget. She’d forgotten the way Elphaba wrapped her arms around her; she’d forgotten the warmth of the bed they shared. She’d forgotten the kisses, and the soothing embraces, and tenderness of their love. It had been difficult to forget, but she’d managed it.

Elphaba cooed in her ear; her arms were now wrapped tightly around Glinda’s waist. “Focus, my sweet,” she murmured. “You must maintain the spell.”

~

When they landed safely in the gardens of the manor, Elphaba refused to let her go. “I didn’t forget,” she murmured. “I didn’t forget, no matter how much it may have seemed as if I had left you behind. I thought of you every day, and I spent every day wondering how I could see you again.”

Glinda pulled Elphaba closer and buried her head in the crook of her neck; her eyes were stinging with her tears. “You’ll not leave me again, Elphaba Thropp.”

“I have no plans to,” Elphaba said soothingly.

There was much to consider, of course. She would have to devise something to tell the staff; she would have to devise something to tell all of Oz. They would not be pleased that their queen had so welcomed the supposed Wicked Witch. She glanced up at the manor, at the beautiful palace her position and prestige and _popularity_ had built, tucking herself against Elphaba’s side as they began to walk towards the house. Perhaps Glinda would not be allowed to stay with Elphaba. But _Galinda_ could, and, she soothed herself, there was a house – a fine house, a smaller house – in Gillikin, just waiting for her. It would not, on balance, be such a bad thing to return there, to abandon bubbles and tiaras and power, and exchange them for a quiet life, for dresses that fit and days spent wandering the countryside.

Elphaba stopped them, and brushed the back of her hand against her cheek. “You are so beautiful,” she murmured, and bent her head to kiss her very gently. She was all that Glinda remembered: warmth and softness and tenderness all at once, and _she_ , Glinda decided would be worth anything. 


End file.
